Feature #4513: allow whitespace following EOL continuation backslash

• Status: Assigned
• Priority: Normal
• Assignee: nobu (Nobuyoshi Nakada)
• Target version: next minor

[Rich_Morin (Rich Morin)]

=begin
In a few programming languages, the displayed or printed program can hide
critical syntactic and/or semantic information. For example, in make(1)
and Python, the difference between initial tabs and spaces can cause bugs
that are not visually apparent.

Ruby has a minor instance of this problem, in that spaces or tabs
between a backslash and the EOL will prevent the line from being continued:

a \
?> = 2
=> 2
b \
SyntaxError: compile error
(irb):3: syntax error, unexpected $undefined, expecting $end
from (irb):3

Could Ruby open up its syntax to allow any number of intervening spaces or tabs before the EOL?
=end

[nahi (Hiroshi Nakamura)]

• Description updated (diff)
• Category set to core
• Status changed from Open to Assigned
• Assignee set to nobu (Nobuyoshi Nakada)

Regardless it's acceptable or not, we want to check nobu's local patches first. Don't you have that?

[mame (Yusuke Endoh)]

• Target version set to next minor

[nobu (Nobuyoshi Nakada)]

• Priority changed from Normal to 3

It is easy to change, but I doubt if it is useful.